


behind enemy lines

by TheWrongKindOfPC



Series: slightly less magical older-sibling-figures in like [3]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 07:35:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5819785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Orla doesn’t lie to other people, but sometimes she lies to herself a little. Too bad Blue’s got no time for that shit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	behind enemy lines

**Author's Note:**

> This one's a little bit of a love letter to the ladies of Fox Way :)

“A few weeks ago, you were the one who was warning me that they never stay,” Blue’s voice calls from somewhere in the vicinity of Orla’s doorway. Orla doesn’t turn to look and place her location any more precisely than that: she’s in the middle of a crucial, delicate moment in the process of adding wings to her eyeliner in acknowledgment of the novelty of the party she’s going to tonight.

Without turning, she asks, distracted, “What? Who never stays where?”

“Raven boys,” Blue says, and this time she sounds closer. “Stay here. Or stay anywhere you or I can reach them.”

“Declan isn’t a raven boy,” Orla says, and knows she’s splitting hairs, objecting to the specifics because there’s no escaping the sweeping generality of the way she’s been breaking her own rules, with Declan. “He’s not going to leave because he’s already gone.”

“So what do you call all this?” Blue asks, and now Orla can see her face in the mirror Orla is hunched over the mirror on the dresser now, adding glitter, because she’s not sure exactly what the dress-code for this little shindig she’s crashing is actually going to be, but she does know there’s no way she could meet or blend into it, even if she did know. She’s going to stand out, and since there’s no escaping that, she might as well sparkle.

“Having an active social life,” Orla dodges the question breezily. “Now what’s the third degree all about? Don’t you have corpses to be hunting down with your harem?”

“Declan is a shithead,” Blue says, finger-combing out a thin slice of Orla’s curls and braiding a fine border from her temple down the side of her head. “He’s a snob and a social climber, and he lies a lot.”

“Sounds like just my type,” Orla says, tilting her head so Blue can more reach the braid as it snakes closer to the back of her head.

“Ronan says he might be a republican,” Blue goes on.

She’s so much like Maura sometimes, and she doesn’t even know it. The spiky, weird concern in her tone makes Orla smile. “Maybe I can seduce him back to social reform and universal healthcare with my feminine wiles.”

That makes Blue smile. “You are wily,” she agrees, fastening off the end of the braid with a hair elastic from her own wrist.

“Hey, I’ve got to get my kicks where I can, kid,” Orla tells her, smiling at Blue briefly and then turning around to dig through her closet for that one pair of magenta platforms she thinks will really make her outfit pop.

Orla has always known her choices are either to be content with her Henrietta social scene and enjoy reigning large in a little pond until she dies, or to run off with an admirer to a strange city she’d love and be eaten alive by, and end up retreating back to Fox Way, older and tired and possibly knocked up, a few years later, just like her mother before her. The wider world, Jimi has always said, isn’t always easy on people who can see a little bit beyond it, like them. Some days, she’s not sure which fate would be worse.

In any case, Declan feels like some kind of compromise between the two, like walking the line between self-destruction and a stultifyingly dull. And there’s something satisfying about hanging around someone who’s probably not objectively a very good person. It takes some of the pressure off, really. She thinks being around someone like Blue’s Gansey and his blinding, self-righteous goodness too often would be exhausting. Orla can be a good person without being very nice; Declan can be nice without being very good. He has the car, she has places to go. There’s a certain amount of symmetry to their dynamic.

Blue watches as Orla laces up the platforms and asks, “Anyway, you want to borrow my knife? It’s pink.”

“Wouldn't match my shoes,” Orla muses.

“It’s a frat party,” Blue says, heaving herself up to sit on the dresser. “You can’t go behind enemy lines unarmed.”

“I’m never unarmed, Ultramarine,” Orla reminds her, tapping a fingernail to her temple.

…

Declan is early, and Orla thinks maybe she can feel his nervousness, his hesitant regret at even asking her, from here. She’s not sure if that’s psychic perception or just the normal kind of observation and common sense, though. Orla charges down the stairs at a bit of a jog not because she’s in a hurry—Declan can wait—but just because she’s always taken this stairway that way, picking up speed when she rounds the curve of the second-floor landing, and taking the rest of the steps at a trot.

From the kitchen, “Got your pepper spray?” Calla calls.

“And Blue’s switchblade,” Orla agrees, leaning over to kiss Jimi’s cheek.

“Don’t stay out too late,” her mother reminds her. “We need to go out for birch leaves while there’s still morning dew tomorrow.”

“Ma,” Orla whines, but she did promise, she knows, so she goes on, “If I’m back too late, I’ll just stay up, okay?”

There’s a knock at the door, so Orla doesn’t wait for Jimi’s answer, just pulls the door open and tells Declan, “Calm down, I’m coming.”

Declan blinks at her, then leans around to address Jimi. “It’s lovely to see you again, ma’am.”

“Hmmm,” Jimi intones noncommittally. 

…

When she heard ‘frat party,’ Orla pictured something with a lot more keg-stands and noise complaints, and a lot less champagne flutes and semi-formalwear than what she gets. She mentions as much to Declan, who tells her, “Oh, we’ll get to that, too, just give it a couple of hours,” but even his oily veneer of charm seems to be a little knocked askew by the incontrovertible enormousness of the way Orla and her river of earrings and glitter don’t fit into this dining room lined with plates of hors d’ovres.

 _Enemy territory_ Orla thinks, with an ironic little smile that’s just for her and Blue.

“Declan, you haven’t introduced your friend,” says a blonde who looks like Christmas has come early for her, as she takes in Orla’s everything, and Orla wouldn’t need the tendril of awareness of the girl’s energy to know that this is the ex-girlfriend.

“Of course,” Declan starts to say, “Ash, this is—” but Orla isn’t about to be a prop in this scene, so she smiles real wide and cuts in, “You’re presuming quite a bit there, aren’t you?”

The girl, Ashley, blinks politely and says, “You’re …not friends?”

“Nope,” Orla pops the sound of the ‘p,’ then lets her lips stretch wide to show all of her teeth as she tucks a hand around Declan’s arm. “I’m just using him for his body.” Distantly, she’s aware that one of Declan’s frat brothers cracks a laugh at that, claps Declan on the back approvingly, but Orla holds Ashley’s gaze.

There are only a few ways to get out of this extensive of eye-contact, and Ashley actually takes her most graceful option—doesn’t flinch away or glare back, but breaks into a smile of her own. “Good for you,” she tells Orla, and if she doesn’t look like she’s given up on going for the jugular, she’s no longer planning on going after Orla as a proxy for Declan, which is fair enough, really.

“ _You_ look like you could use another drink,” Declan’s amused frat brother tells her, and Orla takes the redirection for the gift that it is.

…

The sun is only just coming up when a tired-eyed Declan pulls his car into the driveway at 300 Fox Way. “You sure you’re alright to drive back after this?” Orla checks in. “There’s plenty of room on the couch if you want to crash for a few hours.” She may not always be sure how much she likes him as a person, but that doesn’t mean she wants to see his corpse smeared across the highway.

“I’m fine,” he tells her, and maybe it is some kind of macho ignoring of his own limits, but if it is, he’s managed to convince himself, too—there’s no hint of artifice in the answer, which is good enough for Orla.

It’s been a not-half-bad night, and Orla is the good kind of bone-tired, so she leans across the gearshift to kiss the last trace of the party’s adrenaline off of his mouth, and when she pulls back, he says, “So when can I see you again?”

“Full moon’s Thursday,” she tells him, and she’s not entirely sure why she does it, “If you want to try a different kind of party.”

“Dancing naked in the moonlight?” Declan asks, and he’s kind of joking, but there’s a thread of seriousness to the question.

“We’re not witches,” Orla tells him, dimples coming out to enjoy his confusion. “Nah, we’ll probably just have a fire in the yard, mom and Maura will get drunk on wine and Calla says she’ll teach me to make a Manhattan. Blue and I might go swimming in the creek if it’s warm enough.”

It’s essentially a family thing, is what she’s telling him, and she watches his face as he takes that in. “I could go for that,” he says after a moment.

“Great,” she tells him. “Come over around five so you can drive me to the grocery store first, the car’s broken again.” And that’s quite enough of that, so she leaves him with a peck on the cheek and sweeps out of the car as dramatically as she can manage with the edges of a hangover already creeping in to hang around her head.

She closes the door to the house as quietly as she can, and when she sees that Jimi isn’t up yet, she’s tempted to just lie down on the couch she’d offered Declan and squeeze in a little bit of a nap, but she made a promise, so instead, she slips off her platforms, takes the stairs two at a time until the second-floor landing, and eases her mother’s door open.

“Mom,” she says, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Birch leaves, remember?”

“Five more minutes,” Jimi mumbles, hands groping blindly till she finds Orla and tugs her down beside her. “You have fun, sweet pea?”

Orla settles into the space beside Jimi on the pillow and nods. “Successful infiltration of enemy territory,” she says.

“That’s nice, sweetie,” Jimi mumbles, eyes already sliding closed. “Wake me in a minute or two, okay?”


End file.
